Twitter

[Former_Member]

Does anyone use Twitter to promote their shop?
I've never used Twitter on a personal level and now I'm trying to use it to promote my shop. Needless to say, I have no clue what I'm doing. I've read as much as I could find about it on Etsy and on the Twitter website but I still feel lost. Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Also, I'm very interested to hear which social media strategies work best for everyone else.

[Former_Member]

I'll be glad to chime in on this one.

Twitter is one of the best sources for traffic to my Etsy shop. I use a multi-point approach to using Twitter. So far, it's generated GENUINE followers, re-tweeters (VERY important) and lots of shop and item views.

1. I follow those of like-minded interests. I sell vintage and antiques, so I follow other dealers in these goods, auction houses, and anyone who's profile states they love the kind of stuff I sell.
2. I follow the 80/20 rule. 80% of my content is informational, entertaining, or otherwise non-product related. I don't want to hit my readers over the head with constant "Hey, I'm selling this! Buy it now!" posts.
3. I blog a lot. And I usually auto-tweet my blog posts.
4. I use IFTTT to auto-tweet my new Etsy listings to save me time (check out the Team thread on how to do this with Tumblr...it can be easily adapted for Twitter too).
5. I'll spend maybe 5-10 minutes a day checking out tweets from others and re-tweeting good ones. People LOVE LOVE LOVE to be re-tweeted!!!
6. Hashtags are important. I use the hashtag #auctionfinds so people can see the great items I just got that I'll soon list on Etsy.
7. I also find it's important to let people know that you're not only TRYING to sell, but that you're actually SELLING the stuff. So I'll also occasionally tweet a pic of a bunch of packages I'm off to mail. This way, your product tweets have a bit more veracity.


I could probably go on for another hour or so, but hopefully this will help get you started.

And you REALLY should look into IFTTT. It can really save you a lot of time!

[Former_Member]

what are the best tags for custom products? using things like #auctionfinds are clever, but what really cultivates response?

[Former_Member]

Did you know there were over 300 tweets with the hashtag #cats yesterday around 2pm?

Did you know there were about 50 tweets with the hashtag #bespoke around 6am today?

Did you know that #custom was tweeted yesterday afternoon?

How do I know this?

The website http://www.hashtags.org trends Twitter hashtags.

I recommend trying a few words related to your artwork. Perhaps "custom", "artwork", "pets", etc.

Find the ones that both relate to your product AND have trending traffic. Then start to liberally sprinkle them throughout your tweets. Such as:

"Love your pet Airdale? Why not get a custom-made work of art? Affordable, beautiful, OOAK. #pet #airdale #custom #artwork"

This is not THE answer, but it is at least ONE of them.

Hope this helps.

[Former_Member]

Thank you so SO much for all of the information!

[Former_Member]

@Lauren: No problem. Hope it helps.

[Former_Member]

I often hear people talk about not having enough time for handling a decent social media presence.

I just found this nice article that gives you a good way to "do Twitter" in only 10 minutes a day.

Check it out, it may be helpful:

http://mashable.com/2014/02/17/twitter-time/

[iainbyrne]

I think the most important thing with twitter (and all social media) is the SOCIAL part. Gain friends, chat, retweet if your not social you won't get or keep followers

[Former_Member]

Nice Infographic on how to get good Twitter followers:

http://www.bitrebels.com/social/40-ways-increase-your-twitter-followers/

[Former_Member]

I'm using Twitter, i seem to get a lot of page views from there by no sales yet. I would like to have more followers for sure!